Category: Sunset

My second shoot with Tamrin, for all of the reasons that I stated last time, she’s just a great model to photograph! As the weather was so sunny, we headed out to some nearby lakes to catch the golden light of magic hour.

In a relatively rare event, Venus and Jupiter were both very visible and close to each other in the evening sky, with the Moon passing between them. Cambridge was blessed with clear skies throughout this period, so I was able to photograph the progress of the Moon relative to the two planets, across three nights.

Venus is above Jupiter in these photos, which were taken at Castle Mound, Murray Edwards College, and Senate House.

Suzie is a second year Theology student, and performed in the last Cambridge Ballet Club show in February. I saw her again at a ballet class that Glory was teaching, and we arranged an autumnal shoot very promptly, while the weather was warm and all the leaves were golden. The clocks had just gone back, so these sunset photos were taken at around 4pm.

My first shoot with Katie was one of my best photoshoot days ever, so I had high expectations for our second shoot, when she came up to visit me in Cambridge. She’d barely settled in after an hour of traffic en route, when we headed out to catch the last hour of golden light before sunset. No sooner did we find our location (each climbing UNDER a fence to get into the field), that we got these shots.

I call it a perfect storm – the Trifecta of perfect location, perfect light, and a perfect model. I’ve seen photos like this in so many portfolios, so I’m thrilled that these all looked stunning straight out of camera.

For the third summer in a row, I travelled to Sweden for an intensive dance workshop. Unfortunately, I sustained an injury in the fortnight before flying out that rendered me unable to take part. Not one to waste an opportunity (or a non-refundable flight), I hired a car and drove around the myriad forests and lakes in South-Eastern Sweden for 4 days.

In addition to a dozen or so huge national parks, Sweden has hundreds of small nature reserves, all (relatively)-well documented, mapped, and sign-posted. So it was rather easy to hop from one to another, walk freely through the forests, feel at one and alone in nature, and admire the breathtaking scenery. Two main images remain firmly implanted in my memory – forests where every boulder, rock and patch of ground is covered in multi-coloured mosses; and expanses of blue lakes bordered by forests on all sides.

For the third time in one week, I found myself heading to the meadows at sunrise to get some photos. This dawn was much damper than the previous week’s, so the damselflies weren’t quite as forthcoming, but I did find one particularly friendly model who posed very patiently for lots of photos and macro video.

Went to bed at 2, still awake at 3, playing piano didn’t help, so at 4 I cycled to Fen Ditton meadows in search of more damselflies to photograph. I didn’t find as many this time, but got some artier photos of the beautiful bugs I did find :)

I must be crazy…

It was still dark enough to require flash, which really shows off the iridescent colours

This crafty critter was surprisingly awake – he’d always move so he was on the far side of the plant stem from me. You can run, but you can’t hide…